Free Gibraltar Road by Philip McCutchan Page B

way I can—and it sounds as though you can help us a lot, too.” He smiled a little then, tightly, anxiously. “You were asking about Ackroyd.”
    “It’d help if I could know where he is.”
    Staunton leaned forward, shoulders hunched. “Suppose I told you he was dead?”
    Shaw felt very cold suddenly. He asked, “Is he?”
    “My dear chap, that’s what we all want to know.” Staunton gave a sidelong glance at the Chief of Police, and Shaw, following that glance, noticed the dubious look which crossed the policeman’s face. Staunton went on deliberately, “A body was found this morning above Europa Point. Just below Windmill Hill. And Ackroyd hasn’t been seen since last night. There was no alarm till the body was found. Owing to the injuries it was totally unrecognizable, but it carried papers belonging to Ackroyd, and the general physical build and so on tallies. All the same, and in spite of the fact that the Chief of Police here disagrees, I don’t believe it’s Ackroyd’s body.” Again he looked over at the other man, and then went on, “But I can tell you this much, after a fairly exhausting day’s work: Ackroyd is no longer in Gibraltar, whether or not he’s in the next world. We’ve gone through the place with a tooth-comb.” He hesitated for a moment. “I can tell you something else, too: if we don’t find him pretty damn quick there’s going to be trouble. For one thing—and London says you know the details already and you’ll understand—I’ve heard that that blasted fuel unit of his has developed a defect again, and now they can’t stop it to find out what’s wrong. Ackroyd seems to be the only one who knows anything—and we’re expecting a planeload of distinguished senior officers from N.A.T.O., plus Cabinet Ministers, who’re coming to watch the thing in operation!”
    Shaw had gone very white. He said, “So that’s happened again, has it? Why can’t they switch off?”
    Staunton snapped, “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about the damn’ thing. All I know is the bare fact that they can’t put it right, and they can’t switch it off.” He added, “I’m more concerned about Ackroyd himself.”
    That phrase— London says you know the details already — had shaken Shaw because of what Carberry had told him. He said, “Major, is the thing . . . overheating? Is that it?”
    Staunton’s searching glance ran over his face. “I believe it is. I gather the report from the technicians said something like that. Why? What’s the matter?”
    “Major,” said Shaw quietly, “I shouldn’t start worrying just because the high-ups are due. If they can’t switch off soon there’s going to be more than mere trouble.” Earnestly he leaned forward, feeling the sweat sticky on his face. “Don’t you realize the Rock’s likely to go sky-high? Right now we’re sitting on what could be the biggest atomic blast since Hiroshima.”

CHAPTER SIX
    The night before Shaw arrived the seedy-looking little man with the timid eyes had been happier than he’d ever been in his life. Happier and more important-feeling.
    The huge power-production unit, even its lead casing seeming to pulse with controlled energy, had been running quite satisfactorily in the close, stuffy power-house, the enormous cavern which the Admiralty had allocated to it below Gibraltar’s rock. It seemed almost to speak to him, to respond to his caresses as he put out a skinny arm and patted the metal fondly, revealing the dark sweat-stains under the armpits of his open-necked white shirt. Dum-da, dum-da , it went, in its slow, emphatic way . . . dum-da, dum-da, dum-da, dum-da . . . .
    That machine—Autopowered Fuel Production Unit (AGL Six), Mark One, to give it the full designation, or AFPU ONE for short—was Mr Ackroyd’s whole life, almost of itself the culmination of years and years of grinding work and study which had really started when he was just a kid at the grammar school in the East Riding,